"To my mind it's the fact that teacher's hands are tied by so many human rights, and do gooders rules and regulations, that they have no means of sanctioning these children. This is what is at the root of a lot of these things, children now feel they have more rights than their parents and teachers."

I think that those two sentences say it all, really. But we need to bear in mind that 'political correctness' and 'human rights' were originally introduced with the best of intentions - it's their distortion by our 'mad' media and their application by glassy-eyed apparatchiks, mindless careerists and the 'holier-than-thou' brigade that is at the root of the problem. I've long been convinced that those in public life of an authoritarian persuasion now find it so difficult to discipline the criminal and the anti-social that they have to turn their attentions to the, generally, law-abiding and to punishing minor and/or trivial infractions.